MCA Cards

• Location: IBM PS/2 55sx

2-8MB 386 Memory Expansion Adapter

P/N 90X9369

2-8MB 386 Memory Expansion Adapter

P/N 90X9369

• The XGA Graphics Chip

• XGA Display Adapter/A

• Wikipedia

• Wikipedia on Blitters. 

• XGA butterfly demo file

• XGA demo on YouTube.

• Like the 8514, XGA offered fixedfunction hardware acceleration to offload processing of 2D drawing tasks. Both adapters allowed offloading of line-draw, bitmap-copy (BitBlt), and color-fill operations from the host CPU.

• I am having problemes makining this card replace the onboard VGA. Higher resolutions work as monitor no. 2. More info here: Cannot get my IBM original MCA XGA card working \ VOGONS 

• IBM Display Adapter 8514/A

• The 8514/A Graphics Accelerator

• These VGA Cards have a COPROCESSOR!

• The interface allows computer software to offload common 2D-drawing operations (line-draw, color-fill, and block copies via a blitter) onto the 8514 hardware. 

• The IBM 8514 adapter does not generate VGA. It does generate 1024 x 768 at 43.5 Hz, interlaced, and that's all. Its an accelerator card thats accelerate and gives a new 1024x768 resolution. The memory on the card is only for the new resolution. Your existing VGA card will not have access to the extra video memory.

• The 8514/A card simply provides a high resolution of 1024 x 768 with 16 or 256 colors.

• When the system is running applications in VGA mode (or lesser resolutions) the 8514/A card simply passes the VGA information from the motherboard VGA controller through the Auxiliary Video Extension (AVE). When applications require high resolution, a TSR program called HDILOAD (provided with the adapter) installs the 8514/A Adapter Interface (AI) code.

• More info and a demo disk for th1 8514/A

• + Same as above

• Unlike later pass-through solutions used by video decoder or 3D accelerator boards (notably the 3Dfx Voodoo line), the 8514/A did not use an analog pass-through. The PS/2 VGA chips supported a special digital connection which provided digital data before passing it through a palette look-up table (LUT). In pass-through mode, the LUT and DAC of the 8514/A were used, bypassing the on-board VGA ones. To this end, the 8514/A could shadow the VGA palette—writes to the VGA DAC were also directed to the 8514/A DAC, which was fully compatible but supported higher pixel clocks. The 8514/A’s DAC could also be controlled separately without affecting the VGA DAC.

• Like other pass-through solutions, this set-up also allowed users to attach two monitors and use the VGA and the 8514/A simultaneously, even if that was not the typical usage scenario. This was a notable difference from nearly all follow-on designs which integrated a VGA core with an accelerator on a single chip (or at least a single board).

CN200E/2

16-bit Ethernet" LAN card compatible with Novell" NE/2 software.
Jumper settings

• NIC Type: Ethernet

• Transfer Rate: 10Mbps

• Data Bus: 16-bit ISA

• Topology: Linear Bus

• Wiring Type RG-58A/U 50ohm coaxial

• AUI transceiver via DB-15 port

• Boot ROM Available